AI-generated content is flooding the internet

In the early days of the worldwide web, the New Yorker published a now-famous single-panel comic with the caption: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
That cartoon by Peter Steiner was published on July 5, 1993. (See articles by Wikipedia and Know Your Meme.)
Today, with the rise of artificial intelligence, nobody knows if they’re interacting with AI online.
Meanwhile, AI slop content is flooding the internet right now. And it’s probably just the beginning.
A study by Pew Research found that 35% of web pages published since the November 2022 launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI show significant signs of being written by artificial intelligence.

Fake writers, AI-generated articles

Media watchdog Press Gazette raised questions about eight prolific finance journalists who cover the world of cryptocurrency. When websites that published their articles were alerted and were unable to verify that those writers exist, they removed the articles.
The questionable freelancers had a history of writing positive stories about cryptocurrency launches, Press Gazette said. Their LinkedIn profiles appear to be fake.
Press Gazette also uncovered 1,000 articles in the British press attributed to 50 fake, non-existent and AI-enhanced experts. The investigation spurred leading public relations trade bodies to launch a campaign that called for journalists to check sources and the credentials of PR people they deal with.
Press Gazette also exposed two fake versions of the Forbes website that were packed with AI-generated and promotional content. Those websites contained articles by writers whose identities could not be verified, Press Gazette said. The articles appear to be AI generated, according to AI detector Pangram. The fake Forbes sites were linked to a shady PR agency Baden Bower.

LinkedIn adds 'Seems like AI slop' button

Last month, LinkedIn announced a new feature for users to flag posts suspected of being generated by AI. It has added a button called “Seems like AI slop.” The social media platform is awash in AI slop, 404 Media reported.
Social media services Instagram, X and others also are dealing with a surge in AI content. Some of it is benign but some of the content is intended to deceive. And it’s only going to get worse.

Related articles:

How Much of the Internet Is Written With AI? (Pew Research Center; Aug. 20, 2026)

A third of web pages published since ChatGPT launched were written by AI, study finds (Tech Crunch; Aug. 20, 2026)

Tech websites remove articles after failing to verify journalists exist (Press Gazette; Sept. 3, 2026)

PR bodies launch campaign against fake experts after Press Gazette investigation (Press Gazette; Jan. 29, 2026)

Fake Forbes websites and the PR agency offering guaranteed coverage – at a price (Press Gazette; Aug. 12, 2026)

LinkedIn Introduces a 'Seems Like AI Slop' Button (404 Media; July 30, 2026)

LinkedIn offers the option to report AI slop (HR Dive; Aug. 3, 2026)

Photo: Comic generated by Google Gemini.

Song of summer 2026: 'Choosin' Texas' by Ella Langley

With the arrival of Labor Day weekend, summer has unofficially come to an end. So, it’s time to choose the song of summer – the tune that defined summer 2026 and racked up the most attention, airplay, streams and media buzz.
The song of summer for 2026 is “Choosin' Texas” by Ella Langley. The country-pop crossover hit "Choosin' Texas" spent 20 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. It also was the top pick for Song of Summer by the editors at streaming music service Spotify.
A strong runner-up was "hate that i made you love me" by Ariana Grande. It was Spotify’s global most-streamed song of the summer after spending 89 days inside the Spotify Global Top 10.
Ariana Grande is my pick for music artist of summer 2026. Her hit song "hate that i made you love me" and her Eternal Sunshine Tour created a lot of buzz. The tour started on June 6 in Oakland, Calif., and ended on Sept. 1 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
My honorable mentions for music artist of summer 2026 are Harry Styles and Zara Larsson.
Harry’s Together, Together World Tour earned glowing reviews. Instead of a traditional stadium concert tour, Styles opted for multi-night residencies at large venues in major culture capitals. The tour included a 30-night run at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Meanwhile, Larsson owned the digital aesthetic of the summer season. Her remix album “Midnight Sun: Girls Trip” was a smash and she became the face of TikTok's "Pop Girl Summer" with viral dance choreography, beauty trends, and heavy festival coverage.

Recent songs of summer

2018   “In My Feelings” by Drake
2019   “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus
2020   “Rockstar” by DaBaby featuring Roddy Ricch
2021   “Good 4 U” by Olivia Rodrigo
2022   “As It Was” by Harry Styles
2023   “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen
2024   “I Had Some Help” by Post Malone and featuring Morgan Wallen
2025   “Ordinary” by Alex Warren
2026   “Choosin' Texas” by Ella Langley

Music artist of summer

2018   Cardi B
2019   Billie Eilish
2020   Doja Cat
2021   Olivia Rodrigo
2022   Harry Styles
2023   Taylor Swift
2024   Chappell Roan
2025   Morgan Wallen
2026   Ariana Grande

Related articles:

From Country Roads to Football Anthems, These Are Spotify’s 2026 Songs of Summer (Spotify; Sept. 3, 2026)

So, What Was Song Of The Summer 2026? (Nylon; Sept. 3, 2026)

Ella Langley’s ‘Choosin’ Texas’ Breaks Record With 20th Week at No. 1 (The New York Times; Aug. 31, 2026)

TikTok is censoring conservative voices

Conservative commentators on X have been speaking out lately about how social media platform TikTok has been deleting videos that talk about the infiltration of Islam into American communities and politics.
Content creators including Chloe Trapanotto, Nate Friedman, Cam Higby, Amy Reichert, Xaviaer DuRousseau and others have said their videos and posts on TikTok about the threats posed by Islam and illegal immigration have been deleted.
TikTok is vaguely claiming that the videos violated “community guidelines.” Islamists like to complain about “Islamophobia” even though having fears about an Islamic takeover are not an irrational concern. It’s already happened in hosts of formerly Christian countries.
Instead of trying to weaken the U.S. and Europe through terror attacks, Islam’s Jihad 2.0 is about mass immigration and changing western governments from within. It could take decades but Islamists are playing the long game to advance their totalitarian ideology.
Check out the following thread on X for specifics.
Pundits expressing outrage over the TikTok censorship have included Eric Daugherty, James O'Keefe, Ryan Fournier and Avery Daye.
While TikTok and other social media platforms have bowed to complaints from Muslims and leftists to take down posts, X, formerly Twitter, remains a beacon of light for expressing diverse opinions. Thank you, Elon Musk.

TikTok is censoring conservative voices that speak out about the infiltration of Islam into American politics and communities. What follows is a thread of concerning posts.

— Patrick Seitz (@PatrickSeitz) August 30, 2026

@PatrickSeitz Namaste, the unroll you asked for: https://t.co/xdeYGkMQ7x Enjoy :) 🤖

— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) August 30, 2026

The perfect bathroom-break mobile phone game: Connections

I’m not much for mobile games. My wife and daughter like to play Wordle, but that’s never appealed to me. Fellow New York Times game Connections is more my speed.
For free players like me, it offers one short game each day. The object is to sort 16 blocks containing a word or phrase into groups of four based on how they’re related.
The game designers try to make it tricky by including a few blocks that could be related but don’t fit into a group of four.
I like Connections because it allows me to take a short break from whatever it is I’m working on. And it’s not too involved. In fact, it’s the perfect length of time for bathroom break.

Netflix DVDs-by-mail was peak home entertainment

In hindsight, consumers never had it so good with home entertainment than with Netflix’s DVDs-by-mail service.
As soon as theatrical movies were available for home video release, Netflix subscribers could get them via the U.S. Postal Service in short order.
In 2000, Netflix began offering unlimited rentals and no late fees for a monthly fee of $19.95 and users could have four discs out at a time. Whenever subscribers returned a disc, they received the next title in their queue. Netflix added high-definition Blu-ray discs to the DVD library in 2006.
The popularity of Netflix’s service eventually drove out of business home video rental stores such as Blockbuster.
Netflix had every major release and practically every film you could think of in its catalog of DVD and Blu-ray disc movies and TV series.
When the company added streaming video titles to its service as a free added perk in 2007, it spelled the beginning of the end for physical disc rentals.
In November 2010, Netflix introduced a “streaming-only” subscription service plan. The popularity of that service and its expanding content selection, including exclusive originals, led the way for Netflix to end its discs-by-mail service on Sept. 29, 2023.
Netflix in its disc-rental days was the Library of Alexandria for movies and TV series because its catalog was so extensive. But that nirvana is gone.
Now, if you want to watch a particular movie, you must search for it across multiple streaming services – Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock and more.
The company that is best positioned to serve this new world is probably Amazon. Because if you can’t find a certain theatrical release on its streaming service, it likely is available on Amazon for pay-per-view. That’ll cost you more, but at least it’s all in one place.

AI is hammering the news business

Generative artificial intelligence is having a big impact on the news business. And it’s mostly been negative so far.
For starters, internet search traffic has shifted rapidly from traditional search engines that provide links to relevant content to providing straight-up answers. That has led to news publishers losing traffic and advertising revenue. The situation has gotten dire for the news business.
For many years, publications taught journalists to load their articles with popular search terms or keywords in hopes of ranking highly on Google search pages. This technique, called search engine optimization (SEO), is now on life support.
News publishers are preparing for a scenario called “Google Zero,” when internet searches on Google result in zero click-throughs to the source information.
AI (including Google Gemini) has changed the way people discover information online. Industry pundits are advocating approaches called GEO and AEO (generative/answer engine optimization) by structuring their articles to be the source for the large language models used by AI.
News organizations also have pivoted to getting traffic from other sources such as Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and within AI chatbots.
For news publishers to survive, experts say that they need to lean into Google’s E-E-A-T principles (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness).
But those actions might be just a Band-Aid for a bigger problem.
Meanwhile, large media organizations are suing AI companies like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic for using their content to train AI models without compensating the media companies. Some media firms have reached content licensing deals in lieu of litigation.
“To many publishers, Google’s AI Overviews feel uncomfortably close to a kind of IP (intellectual property) heist: The company ingests their journalism, surfaces synthesized answers at the top of Search and increasingly cuts off the traffic that once compensated publishers for their work,” Andy Meek, Forbes senior contributor said in a recent article.

Related articles:

Once Unimaginable, Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search (Adweek; July 8, 2026)

Who’s suing AI and who’s signing (Press Gazette; July 3, 2026)

Report: Google Zero Click Searches To Open Web Fall To 27.6% (Search Engine Roundtable; June 10, 2026)

Google Search AI Overhaul Leaves Publishers Bracing For ‘Google Zero’ (Forbes; May 25, 2026)

Photo: Image generated by Google Gemini.

Vanishing web content and internet services

There are frequent reminders that things on the internet aren’t permanent. Web content and online services are sometimes here today and gone tomorrow.
For instance, earlier this month TV Time, a tracking app for TV shows and movies, announced that it is shutting down on July 15. When that happens, all personal user data will be deleted.
TV Time has operated for more than a decade and built a dedicated community around episode tracking, watchlists and user ratings. But TV Time said the service is “no longer sustainable.” (See article by MacRumors.)
But all is not lost in this case. Rival services including JustWatch, Serializd and Trakt are offering migration tools for TV Time users to transfer their viewing history, watchlists and episode-tracking data to their platforms.
In May, ABC News purged the archives of respected data journalism website FiveThirtyEight and set up mass redirects to the generic politics section of ABCNews.com. The move took down thousands of articles dating back to the website’s founding in 2008.
ABC bought FiveThirtyEight, known for its data-driven analyses of elections, sports and other subjects, in April 2018.
The abrupt takedown drew heavy criticism from former editors, data journalists, and historians who viewed it as a massive blow to the preservation of public data and political history. (See article by the New York Times.)
A bigger data deletion occurred on Sept. 30, 2025, when blogging platform Typepad went dark after 22 years of service. Typepad announced its planned closure in late August 2025.
Users were given just over a month's notice to manually export decades worth of content before the servers were permanently deactivated and all unexported blogs were wiped out.
Also in May, search engine Ask.com quietly shut down after almost 30 years in operation. It launched in 1996 – a year before Google, which ultimately became the dominant search engine.
Ask.com “follows a spate of Y2K sites to the digital graveyard as AI bots take over the query space,” Sherwood News wrote.

Photos: Screenshots of TV Time and Ask.com.